Editing Montauk, New York (section)

==== Early 20th century ====

In 1924, [[Robert Moses]] began condemning the Benson land to establish state parks on either end of Montauk − [[Hither Hills State Park]] in the west and [[Montauk Point State Park]] in the east. The two parks were to be connected via the [[Montauk Point State Parkway]].

In 1926, [[Carl G. Fisher]] bought most of the [[East End (Long Island)|East End]] of Long Island ({{convert|10000|acres|km2|abbr=on}}) for only $2.5 million. He planned to turn Montauk into the "[[Miami Beach]] of the North", a "Tudor village by the sea".<ref name=nyt>{{cite news |last=Tuma |first=Debbie |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/nyregion/montauk-embraces-its-legacy.html?src=pm |title=Montauk Embraces Its Legacy |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=August 11, 2002}}</ref> His projects included blasting a hole through the freshwater [[Lake Montauk]] to access [[Block Island Sound]] to replace the shallow Fort Pond Bay as the hamlet's port; establishing the Montauk Yacht Club and the Montauk Downs Golf Course; and building [[Montauk Manor]], a luxury resort hotel; the [[Montauk Tennis Auditorium]], which became a movie theater (and is now the Montauk Playhouse); and the six-story Carl Fisher Office Building (later the Montauk Improvement Building and now The Tower at Montauk, a residential condominium). This last building remains East Hampton's tallest occupied building, as zoning ordinances restricted heights of later buildings. The 30 or so buildings Fisher put up between 1926 and 1932 were designed in the [[Tudor Revival architecture|Tudor Revival style]].<ref name=nyt /> Fisher had successfully developed Miami Beach before beginning his Montauk project, but although he continued to pour his money into the development, to the extent of $12 million in total, he eventually lost his fortune due to the [[Wall Street Crash of 1929]], and most of his enterprises were shut down. Other hotels that opened at the time of Fisher's project include [[Gurney's Inn]], built by W. J. and Maude Gurney, who had managed a Fisher hotel in Miami Beach.

In the [[Great Hurricane of 1938]], water flooded across Napeague, turning Montauk into an island. Floodwaters from the hurricane inundated the main downtown, and it was moved {{convert|3|mi|0}} to the south, immediately next to the [[Atlantic Ocean]].

[[File:Camp hero radar ANFPS-35.jpg|thumb|ANFPS-35 radar at [[Camp Hero]], which became the centerpiece of the [[Montauk Project]] conspiracy theory]]